Bag grab try Police arrested Eduardo Corona, 16, and charged him with trying to rob a woman, 31, of her handbag just past midnight as she was entering her Knickerbocker Village building on Monroe St. near Market St. When the victim refused to hand over her bag, the suspect punched her in the face and gave her a bloody nose and a black eye, police said. She called 911 and police arrested Corona, who lives about a block away from Knickerbocker, on an attempted robbery charge.
Food Stamp official busted Federal prosecutors last week charged Oland Saltes, an audit and quality control management specialist with the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, 22 Cortlandt St., with making false statements in connection with The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Stamp Program.
Food Stamps are funded by the U.S.D.A. but are administered by the state and the Temporary and Disability Office is charged with reviewing the eligibility of randomly selected recipients.
Saltes, responsible for conducting the reviews and submitting them to the Department of Agriculture, was required to visit the home of each Food Stamp recipient under review.
The criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan says that from December 2005 to October 2006 Saltes was assigned 47 cases for review and in 40 of those cases he submitted a form to the U.S.D.A. stating he had visited the homes and collected information for the review.
An investigator with the State Inspector General’s Office visited 26 of the 40 Food Stamp recipients and of those, 15 said they never received the visits that Saltes claimed in his report to the U.S.D.A. to have made, according to the complaint.
Earlier this year, the state investigator interviewed Saltes, who admitted that in at least 10 cases he did not make the required home visits. Saltes, 44, was arrested and charged with one count of making false statements to a federal agency. If convicted, he is subject to a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
— Albert Amateau
